Tobacco might fuel your future travel plans

Workers plant the Solaris tobacco at a test farm in Limpopo, South Africa, which will be used to create bio jet fuel. (Photo/SkyNRG)

Laws still prohibit smoking on planes, but tobacco plants could be fueling flights in coming years.

Boeing, South African Airways and alternative jet fuel maker SkyNRG are partnering to develop jet fuel from a new hybrid tobacco plant known as Solaris.

SkyNRG is expanding production of Solaris as an energy crop that farmers could grow instead of traditional tobacco.

Oil from the tobacco plant’s seeds will be converted into jet fuel. (Photo/SkyNRG)

“By using hybrid tobacco, we can leverage knowledge of tobacco growers in South Africa to grow a marketable biofuel crop without encouraging smoking," Ian Cruickshank, South African Airways Group Environmental Affairs specialist, said in a statement.

Test farming of the mostly nicotine-free plants is underway in South Africa with biofuel production expected from large and small farms in the next few years. Initially, oil from the plant’s seeds will be converted into jet fuel.

In coming years, Boeing expects emerging technologies to increase South Africa's aviation biofuel production from the rest of the plant.

Boeing and South African Airways created the partnership last October. They are working with the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials to position farmers with small plots of land to grow biofuel feedstocks.

“South Africa is leading efforts to commercialize a valuable new source of biofuel that can further reduce aviation’s environmental footprint and advance the region's economy,” J. Miguel Santos, Boeing International’s managing director for Africa, said in a statement.

Here's a video from SkyNRG about their vision for the biofuel supply chain for the aerospace sector.

BioPort Holland from SkyNRG on Vimeo.

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In coming years every possible thing can be used as fuel. Every thing under the earth is having energy, the only thing we need to find is way to transform it